General Community News

New Theme for help.ubuntu.com

The Official Ubuntu Documentation site has recently been updated with a new theme. The site links have also been updated to include the Ubuntu Community Documentation site, and all the currently supported versions of Ubuntu, including the newest 8.10 Intrepid release. The new theme, and changes to the site, should make future updates easier to accomplish. Stop by and check it out here: https://help.ubuntu.com/

Dell Mini 9 update testing

In a posting to the Ubuntu-qa mailing list, Chris Gregan, the QA Manager of OEM Services, Canonical USA, asked for owners of the Dell Mini 9 to help out with a new project. The OEM Services group is setting up a repo to handle updates for the Mini 9 and other netbook devices, and is looking for testers to help out. In response to questions concerning who can help, Steve Beattie responded[1] with an outline of how testing is done, and the type of people needed. You can also find an Open Week presentation he gave[2] which further outlines the process.

Jaunty Alpha 1 freeze ahead

The expected release date of Jaunty Alpha 1 is next Thursday, November 20th. The first milestone is happening before the spec process this time due to the coming end of year holidays, and a late UDS(December). The team will continue to use a "soft freeze" for main for the Jaunty Alpha milestones. This means that developers are asked to refrain from uploading packages between Tuesday and Thursday which don't bring us closer to releasing the alpha. These days can then be used for settling the archive and fixing any remaining show stoppers. More details, and links to all the Jaunty information sites are located at the link. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-November/000511.html

Top 5 teams for the past 7 days

LoCo News

Tamil Team Release Party

The Ubuntu Tamil Team had its Intrepid Release Event on Nov 9th at Erode, and Erode IT Association made all arrangements for the event. The team took part and conducted the event, which was an all day affair where participants got hands on experience with everything Ubuntu. Everyone who attended showed great interest in Ubuntu.

The Tamil team made a "Customized Tamil Version" of Ubuntu for the event that was widely praised by the participants. Special Thanks to members of Erode IT Association - Raja, Balu, Srinivasan, Manohar, Mutharasu for organizing this event on short notice immediately after the team called for hosting such an event outside Chennai, the Capital of TamilNadu.

Launchpad News

Lauchpad plugin for Eclipse

Guillermo Gonzalez, the man behind the bzr-eclipse plugin, has recently been working with the Launchpad API to produce an Eclipse plugin that integrates with Launchpad. The user visible plugin allows the user to search the branches of a project, basically it’s a view with a search field. This new plugin will become part of bzr-eclipse, to allow searching for branches, and branching into a new project directly from one of the results. The heart of it is the launchpadlib plugin, which abstracts common features needed by others plugins that need to interact with launchpad. Currently it provides authentication, and access to projects and bugs. Read Guillermo's full list of details at the link. http://news.launchpad.net/api/launchpad-plugin-for-eclipse-using-the-launchpad-api

Launchpod: Episode #12

In this episode of Launchpod, Matthew Revell and Joey Stanford discuss:

The Launchpad team met in London at the end of October. Joey and Matthew speak to Launchpad developers at an optimization session.

Matthew talks to Gary Poster, who is new to Launchpad team, about his new role.

2 new Launchpad interviews

Paul Hummer, the man known as "rockstar" helped to integrate Bazaar into Launchpad. Basically, anything under code.launchpad.net has his hand in it. Also, much of the layout for Launchpad 2.0 was work he did. He is currently working on making the import system better, and exposing much of Launchpad’s merge proposal functionality through the API. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~rockstar Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaulHummer

Ursula Junque works as a QA Engineer. Each day she watches the "OOPS's" you sometimes see when using Launchpad. She then tries to find out what the problem is. Sometimes she opens a bug report, and then tries to get people to fix it. She also works on assuring that Launchpad versions will be well tested before they are released. She loves doing python scripts to enable her work. Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~ursinha

In The Press

Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth opens up on mobility and design - Ryan Paul at ars technica gives us an overview of Ubuntu Open Week. Open Week is a series of discussions and tutorials on IRC dealing with anything Ubuntu, from packaging to bug reporting to virtualization. One of the highlights of Open Week was a two hour Q&A session with Mark Shuttleworth. One topic discussed was the Canonical relationship with Dell. Mark thinks the association with Dell is viewed as a big success, "They know it takes a lot of work to do something like Linux well, and they work very hard at it, so we appreciate the partnership". Mark also touched on the enormous opportunity for Linux in the market of mobile devices. In addition, Shuttleworth addressed critics who state that Canonical has little involvement in kernel development by stating that Canonical’s focus is in making a difference in free software. This commitment can be seen by the fact that nearly half of Canonical's staff is involved in full-time work on Launchpad. Launchpad is the collaborative web-based development platform which is on track to be completely open source by the end of 2009. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081109-ubuntu-open-week-mark-shuttleworth-speaks.html

What’s Next for Linux? Unifying the OS Amid Steady Change - Sedar Yequlalp at Information Week comments on the changes and unification that is taking place within the myriad distributions of Linux. Two of the more popular distributions are steering these changes, Ubuntu and Red Hat. Unification is the goal of Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. This unification can be seen in both the desktop, and server releases of Ubuntu, both of which are showing remarkable growth of late. In an effort to facilitate unification, the Linux Foundation has created Linux Standard Base (LSB) to evaluate whether a Linux application is compatible across distributions. As more businesses utilize Linux, more Linux code is being contributed by corporate funded teams. No individual, or company must comply with LSB, however those that do not comply may develop applications that do not work with all the Linux distributions. http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212002356&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_AL

Ubuntu to run on ARM-based Netbooks - David Meyer of CNET News reports that Canonical has announced (see: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/arm-linux) that they are developing a version of Ubuntu specifically for ARM’s Cortex-A8 and Cortex A-9 processors. The traditional market for ARM-based processors are smaller devices such as mobile phones, but small low-cost netbook computers will also be available running ARM processors. Ian Drew, ARM’s president of marketing stated, "Working with Canonical will pave the way for the development of new features and innovations to all connected platforms". Jane Silber, Canonical’s COO commented, "This is a natural development for Ubuntu, driven by the demand from manufacturers for an ARM technology-based version". The Ubuntu ARM distribution will be available April, 2009. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10097468-92.html?part=rss&subj=news

In The Blogosphere

Learn Ubuntu with Hackett and Bankwell(Comic Book) - Scott Merrill gives a brief review of a different way of presenting Ubuntu to the world. Hackett and Bankwell presents a somewhat simplified concept of the change from Microsoft to Ubuntu in story-like form. Perhaps too simplified, as it doesn't take into account the sorts of little problems that a Windows user might face. Issue One of the comic does include a comprehensive list of online resources, that is intended to help readers follow topics of particular interest. Scott has high hopes for the next issue, which is concerned with the command line. http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/learn-ubuntu-with-hackett-and-bankwell-20081112/

Ubuntu on ARM - The recent announcement by Canonical that they'll be bringing the ARM arch to Ubuntu, is exciting news, especially since ARM devices have been getting more and more features lately. There have been unofficial builds by Nokia for a while, but centralizing the builds should help reduce the effort needed to set up Ubuntu on these platforms. Currently, builds happen after release, and are announced when they are complete. We can now expect regular builds throughout development, and a release date people can plan around.

Ubuntu Server Edition 8.10: Nice, But Who Uses It? - Christopher Tozzi reporting for Works With U, asks this question from a sincere belief that system administrators wouldn't change from a long term support (LTS) release for one that was only supported for 18 months. He admits that there are improvements, but doesn't feel that they are enough to accept the reduced support time. So, who WOULD use them? Right now, there are no figures to show whether or not regular releases are used on production servers. http://www.workswithu.com/2008/11/10/ubuntu-server-edition-810-nice-but-who-uses-it/

Computer upgrade Utopia - Linux Ubuntu upgrade to 8.10 - Stewart Watkiss compares upgrading Ubuntu to upgrading Windows. There are so many ways in which Ubuntu is easier (and cheaper) than Windows to upgrade. One can just click on an update button, and the system does the work for you, including searching out the upgrades to other software that is also installed. Hardware still works, and the system still runs as fast as it did before. http://www.watkissonline.co.uk/wordpress/?p=763

Two Days Without Mac OS X Leopard: Ubuntu 8.10 Review - Bogdan Stroe is a Mac user who has seldom used Linux for anything except Windows recovery. He recently decided to actually try it, and proceeded to install it on a Mac. Of course he noticed some differences in the look and feel, but they were differences that he quickly got used to. Some differences were pleasant, like Compiz-Fusion, however some, like no spring loaded folders, were unpleasant. His recommendation is that those who cannot afford a Mac, or who aren't into heavy media content creation or hard-core gaming, should try out Ubuntu. http://tuxgeek.me/2008/11/two-days-without-mac-osx-leopard-ubuntu-810-review/

In Other News

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 released: Source Editor!

Ubuntu Tweak is an application which allows easy configurations of the Ubuntu desktop and system. The latest version of Ubuntu Tweak has been released, and it now includes a graphical interface which a user can utilize to edit their sources.list. After editing, just press “Save”, you can save the sources.list, rr press “Redo” to reload the sources.list and edit again. When you finish editing your sources.list, you can press “Refresh” to update the system immediately. You will never open the terminal and type “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list”, “sudo apt-get update” again. Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.2 also includes updates to several bugs within the application. http://ubuntu-tweak.com/2008/11/14/ubuntu-tweak-042-released-source-editor.html

Ubuntero gets inked: Ubuntu Style

One South African Ubuntu fan, Denham Coote, took a big step toward showing his commitment to the ubuntu concept by getting an Ubuntu circle of friends tattoo. Denham says that apart from being a great design, he really loves what it stands for. The ideas of sharing, caring, acceptance, diversity, giving back, acknowledgement, and working towards a greater good. ubuntu.com sums it up wonderfully - ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are.’ You can learn more about Denham at his blog: http://www.denhamcoote.com/about or by reading the Fridge interview here. http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1734

Meeting Summaries

LoCo Council Meeting: November 10th

A summary of the minutes for the LoCo Council Meeting is as follows:

Encouraging the LoCos to submit Team Reports: Team Reports are a chance for different groups to share what they are working on with the community at large. Approved LoCos are required to do Team Reports, and it would be great to know what LoCos from all parts of the world are doing to promote and support Ubuntu. Unfortunately, most LoCos do not bother filling out the Team Reports. In October, only 11 of 60+ approved LoCos bothered to provide any information. It's not realistic to expect every LoCo to submit information every month, but we all know more than 11 LoCos have awesome projects going on they can share with the rest of the community. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports

To promote the LoCos that are taking the time to fill out the Team Reports, their submissions will be published in the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Fridge, and Planet. This will not only encourage more LoCos to report their activities, but will also provide all LoCos with ideas of what they can do to advocate for Ubuntu.

South Africa LoCo Review: The South African Team was up for their yearly review this month. During the IRC meeting, Morgan Collett stated the review prompted a leadership change. A smooth transition was made to benefit the LoCo. Jonathan Carter and Morgan are now leading the team. The yearly review gives LoCos a chance to take stock of how a LoCo is doing, what can be improved, and make plans for the future. The LoCo Council is here to make sure LoCos have the resources and help they need to support their regions. Congrats to the South African Team on a successful review, and good luck in the future! http://ubuntu-za.org/

Edubuntu Meeting Minutes

On Wednesday, November 5th, at 18:00 UTC the Edubuntu community had a development meeting. Here are the minutes for those who are interested and/or missed the meeting.

Introduction of the Sugar environment: Sugar is the educational platform/user interface originally developed for One Laptop Per Child, and now operating as a separate upstream project under the governance of Sugar Labs. The Ubuntu Sugar Team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SugarTeam) is working on packages for Sugar.

Should Edubuntu have a strategy document: Edubuntu is currently in somewhat of a state of organizational and developmental flux. Edubuntu has become an addon to Ubuntu (rather than a derived full OS), LTSP has moved to the Ubuntu Alternate CD, and the Edubuntu lead developer has moved to the Ubuntu Mobile team. Consequently, LaserJock proposed that creation of an Edubuntu Strategy Document.

Naming/Branding ("Edubuntu", "Ubuntu in Education", "Ubuntu Education Edition"): As Edubuntu as a project and product have evolved, various branding and marketing initiatives have led to a somewhat unclear and confusing state for the naming and branding of Edubuntu CDs. After some discussion there was agreement that the community should try to work with Canonical to drop "Ubuntu Education Edition", clarify "Edubuntu" as the community, project, and product it has traditionally been known as, and use "Ubuntu in Education"

Drop Alternate CD LTSP installation and instead use GUI from Ubuntu Desktop: There was a brief discussion around a proposal added to the agenda to remove LTSP from the Ubuntu Alternate CD, and instead have a GUI installer that would install LTSP on any existing Ubuntu Desktop. ogra and stgraber explained that it was technically not feasible to do.

Should Edubuntu produce a demo LiveCD: Since Edubuntu is used as an add-on CD there is no live CD available for people to demo it. It was fairly quickly decided that a separate, Ubuntu-based, live CD would be too much maintenance. Additionally, there is not enough space on a single CD to include all of Edubuntu. Creating live USB images was suggested as a possibility. ogra suggested that perhaps Edubuntu could create documentation for creating an image based on the umpc images.

Server Team Meeting Minutes

Minutes from the November 11th Server Team meeting.

Server FAQ: sommer started to update questions on the ServerFaq page. Questions that need to be updated are marked. Action: mathiaz will add a section about updated this section to the Roadmap, and kirkland will review the RAID related questions. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ServerFaq

Get rid of old libdb versions: Work will be started to get rid of old libdb version during the Hardy release cycle. The list of packages needing a review needs to be updated in the Roadmap. Action: zul to update the list of packages depending on libdb

Update ServerGuide for Jaunty: sommer started to gather ideas about the updates to make to the Ubuntu ServerGuide for Jaunty. All the ideas will be tracked in a specification. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyServerGuide

Merges and init script: mathiaz reminded everyone that the archive is open and merging is the main focus of the developers for now. kirkland added that checking if init scripts have a status action is welcome. If not adding one would be appreciated - steps to do so are outline on the InitScriptsStatusActions wiki page. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InitScriptStatusActions

Ubuntu Server survey: nijaba reminded everyone that the Ubuntu Server survey will close next Friday, November the 14th. So far 6777 responses have been gathered (4105 full responses, 2672 responses not completely filled out). http://survey.ubuntu.com/